Dentists and their teams are bombarded every day by administrative tasks. Part of providing comprehensive dental care is the ability to document patient visits accurately and completely with information from all of the team members involved in the process. Documentation is part of the continuum of excellence—from tracking diagnosis and treatment, to identifying future treatment options, aiding in filing insurance claims, and even backing up dentists’ treatment in the case of future legal action. While this critical documentation can be time consuming to complete, new artificial intelligence (AI) solutions such as DentalBee are now available to capture all those pivotal moments and document, analyze, and report on patient visits.
Far more than a glorified tape recorder, DentalBee’s AI system understands dental terms, procedures and medication names as it monitors the conversation, and the people in the room, whether a patient, assistant, or doctor. It then transcribes the conversations from speech to text, sorts and analyzes what’s clinically relevant, and places the information in a format customized to a practice’s specific preferences.
“We are the bee on the wall that no one notices, doing all the busy work for the dentist and team and creating the note to the exact customized template that the dentist wants. There’s no need to busily jot notes while you are rushing to get to the next patient,” explains DentalBee founder and CEO Mohamed Aly.
“DentalBee can capture all of the information from patients, assistants, and doctors in operatories, consultation rooms, or doctors’ private offices, in a quick, easy, time-saving way,” he adds.
Using an AI-powered scribe solution such as DentalBee offers many benefits to a practice, including:
Customization: DentalBee trains the AI to recognize and generate notes and enters those notes into templates provided by the office, in the format and style requested by the provider and the staff. These notes can be directly saved into the PMS.
“The AI is like the doctor’s ‘mini,’ listening to the conversation and documenting the note in the clinician’s style. It’s like having an assistant in the room who understands context, material names, lab names, and dental terms,” Aly says. “The technology is customized down to the preferred grammatical style of the dentist. For example, if the dentist always uses a dash or certain punctuation before a certain type of procedure, the AI is trained that every time it sees that procedure, it uses that punctuation.”
Besides the clinical information, some dentists want to capture a personal note from the patient to build or maintain relationships. (For example: If a patient’s son is on a soccer team, the next time the patient returns to the office, they can remember to ask how he is doing this season.)
The platform is designed to be easy, allowing doctors and staff to speak in their usual way. The AI assistant is able to listen to a conversation and automatically suggest the most appropriate procedure template from a set of options. For referral letters to other dentists, the communication can be customized to fit whatever style the practitioner prefers – whether that’s a bulleted list or any other format. DentalBee’s AI also learns from users’ activities and edits to the notes and corrects itself as it goes.
Comprehensive information and workflow: Knowing that multiple team members may need to collaborate on a patient, notes can travel with them — whether they’re in an office, consultation room, or another operatory. Notes can be accessed and updated from a desktop, iPad, or phone.
The clinical notes even incorporate the details of the procedure, such as materials and products used in the treatment. With this level of documentation, no information about the patient experience is missed or left out. Also, because every aspect of the conversation is captured, future treatment opportunities can also be captured and documented for later. This type of information, which is important to suggesting future treatment options, can be overlooked among the many details of the appointment that is in progress.
“Both doctors and patients want as much detail on the treatments as possible, but there is only so much time. But if they say it, DentalBee can capture it,” Aly describes.
Organization: The information does not have to be provided in a specific order. In other words, there’s no need to use special prompts or state anything line by line. DentalBee’s AI is able to assess whether the context is clinical or non-clinical and places it where it belongs in the notes. It can also generate a full transcript of the conversation, distinguishing between clinicians and patients.
Even patients benefit from the AI. DentalBee generates instructions that are individualized to the patient’s special needs. This creates more trust in the doctor than handing a printout of generic instructions with some extra scribbled writing on the top. The doctor or assistant can say, “Based on today’s encounter, we have created an interactive patient report with specific instructions from your treatment and what we discussed.”
Time savings: Hours of time are spent each day on charting and note-taking. DentalBee provides hands-free note-taking and Perio charting, cutting charting time by up to 2 hours daily per staff member. “Many dentists or staff members will write notes into the PMS very quickly because they are eager to get to the next patient,” Aly says. “This allows for the full record to be kept without the extra time it would take to write or dictate notes into the chart. This provides a more a detailed record, which is very important for a busy dentist.” It’s like having a super administrative assistant that helps with all office documentation.
Accuracy for insurance claims and legal issues: DentalBee’s real-time, detailed notes result in faster insurance payments, reduced claim denials, and backup for legal issues. Secure recording storage is available for up to 7 years to serve as a reliable backup against patient claims or disputes.
DentalBee’s team is innovating for the near and far future to develop capabilities usch as having the AI send the clinical instruction directly to the lab or referrers. Aly says security is always top of mind. While the platform is HIPAA compliant, they are always working to stay ahead of new security rules and regulations.
The months ahead will see the AI and machine learning becoming even more enhanced, improving the quality of the information captured. Aly explains, “Just like dentistry, where there are specialists, there are also different levels of AI – some that capture voice and do a transcription, and then there are specialists that create a higher-quality and more detailed clinical note, with fewer errors and hallucinations (extra words or words out of context). Right now, Dental Bee has several layers of AI so if one layer misses an issue, another layer captures it, corrects it, and another layer makes sure it is correct. But we are always looking for ways to improve.”
The customization also is expected to become more individualized whether an office wants to standardize their templates or allow for custom templates for each provider in the office. “We want it to be completely autonomous and capture each doctor’s style,” says Aly. “Our end goal is completely hands-free charting.”
With DentalBee, doctors can be more present with their patients during appointments. Additionally, offices can choose to enable analysis tools that monitor soft skills, such as the clarity and friendliness of the team in discussions with patients, and use that information to coach team members or find out about the patient’s inclination for future treatment or progress.
The DentalBee team offers onboarding, training, and hybrid support — humans to talk to as well as AI. Take it for a risk-free test drive, and see how it works for your practice.
